Warnings:
1) This is my first blog.
2) This is my first book report in a long time.
3) Don’t read “the book of illusions” by Paul Auster.
In second grade, my first writing assignment ever and at my new, ‘serious’ school was a book report. I had just really learned how to read the summer before 2nd grade. Writing about what I had read seemed beyond impossible. It threw me into my first ‘writing breakdown’, which I believe was witnessed in the thesis process and can be characterized by fits of crying and self-doubt. My father sat down with me during this early breakdown and outlined HIS instructions for writing a book report.
1. The 5 W’s: Who, What, When, Where, Why
I now understand why “The Book of Illusions” was in Chris’s give away book box. This “book of illusions” has no illusions. David Zimmer, a professor of Comparative Literature at a professor small college in Vermont, enters a deep depression following the death of his wife and two young sons in a plane crash. (zimmer’s narration annoyingly always describes his thoughts and feelings. No illusions/doubt/mystery to his character.) After isolating himself in his house with a lot of alcohol for two years, he happens to be watching an old silent film by a director named Hector Mann that to his surprise makes him laugh. He becomes obsessed with tracking down all the films made by Hector Mann, which have mysteriously been recently strewn across the world. David then spends nine months writing the first book on Mann’s work. Mann made twelve silent films and then mysteriously disappeared and was presumed to have died at an early age. (zimmer’s story is interspersed with long sections about Mann’s life. Both stories, however, unravel rather smoothly: romance, sex, depression, some violence, and suicide attempts. I would say all is clear in the end.) Maybe it is an illusion that this book is a ‘book of illusions’.
I read Miss Flora McFlimsey’s Halloween for my first book report. I could not write the book report. Dad grew so frustrated with me that he wrote his own book report on Miss Flora McFlimsey. He wanted me to turn his draft in. 2 paragraphs long, it sounded like a business report.
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2 comments:
There's also the section of the book where hestarts a translation of (what was it, Rimbaud?) included only to justify gratuitous citation therefrom.
I thought about telling you not to take the book, but greedily decided to let you take it off my hands.
We can swap worthwhile books to make up for it.
that sounds like a good plan. it's good to read a bad book every once and a while to sharpen the senses. it also helped to crack any inflated view i may have had of auster.
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